Social Media Is Giving Me Anxiety

Once a pleasant distraction, social media has morphed into a forum for not so humblebrags. It’s time to stop scrolling.

- Alex Kuczynski

I awake and thumb through my Instagram feed: There is the mother of three whose post shows that she has made a delicious lunch for all her gorgeous children in 10 minutes—spinach-and-beet salad topped with a pistachio-cranberry compote—and they all loved it.

Really.

Another friend is strolling through the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. There are Croatian sunsets on yachts, thinkers at the Aspen Ideas Festival, private helicopter rides, glassblowers in Murano, swimmers in the Blue Grotto, and the Instagram perennial: Avocado toast. My favourite posts this summer were the photos of a straw bag with embroidered stitching that read, F*** YOU AND YOUR HAMPTONS HOUSE. Which is always posted by someone who actually owns a big Hamptons house.

Really.

I joined Instagram two years ago. At first it seemed like a lark. My first post was classic freshman fodder: My abs, after a workout at Barry’s Bootcamp. Now I look back and think, Barf. That’s as bad as the Snapchat duck-face pose or the “airplane wing” post (“Heading to the white beaches of Greece!”). How many middle-aged mums who exercise post pictures of their stomachs every day? I can’t count that high.